This post was originally published on October 13, 2006. It has been updated once since then.

Bake is a popular breakfast bread here in Trinidad. Hearty by nature, its heavy crumb it keeps you feeling satisfied for hours. Especially when taken with a savory topping. My version here, raises the fiber content through a healthy dose of wholewheat flour. Be sure to pay attention to the resting time and icy water, it’s necessary for tender results

Wholewheat Bake
Ingredients:
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp …

This post was originally published on November 5, 2008. It has been updated once since then.

Mmm pone. A sinfully sweet childhood memory. Not a pudding, not a cake, but something somewhere in between. Pones are usually made from root vegetables. You can also make them with carrots, sweet potatoes and pumpkin. This time around I decided to try my hand at a popular local version made from cassava. Cassava is intriguing in that although it appears excessively dry when in its raw state, once baked it melts and morphs into …

Image: Sarina’s Coconut Rice With Lentils and Cashews (recipe here)
Not that I need any encouragement, nor am I sure do many of my regular readers, but the BBC ran an article last year touting the benefits of regular curry consumption. Among one of the findings was that a key component in curries (curcumin) can help to prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

Excerpts:.
Curcumin appears to prevent the spread of amyloid protein plaques – thought to cause dementia – in the brain.
Professor Murali Doraiswamy, of Duke University in North …

Sitting here on a Carnival Tuesday night, watching Brian MacFarlane’s opening presentation for his band this year “Resurrection the Mas”
By this time tomorrow we should all know if he has been able to achieve an unbelievable 4 consecutive “Band of the Year” titles. MacFarlane is currently my favourite band designer. I am not a fan of the generic beads and feathers style of mas, it doesn’t capture my spirit or imagination, and the half-hearted attempts by bandleaders to give their thongs and headpieces some kind of …

No Trinidad Carnival post for 2010 would be complete without mention of JW & Blaze and the phenomenon that is “Palance”. This song has taken a word that I doubt I even heard more than once in a year, and turned it into something that everyone is working into the most random and non-sequitur of sentences. There are KFC Palance ‘feasts’ and yuh dun know I want a Palance T-Shirt (though I really really REALLY would like the one worn in the ‘official’ music video, anyone know where I can …

This post was originally published on February 14, 2007. It has been updated once since then.

J’ouvert (joo-VAY) is the start to the Carnival celebrations. It begins in the pre-dawn hours of Carnival Monday and lasts until daybreak. J’ouvert (which is a Creole corruption of the French Jour Ouvert – day opening) is also known as ‘dirty mas’. It seems to symbolise us going down to our rawest most animal and basest selves in the cover of the night, before the sun emerges to reveal us in our finite forms and …

This post was originally published on February 6, 2007.

Dimanche Gras takes place on the Sunday night before Ash Wednesday. Here the Calypso Monarch is chosen (after competition) and prize money and a vehicle bestowed. Also the King and Queen of the bands are crowned, where each band to parade costumes for the next two days submits a king and queen, from which an overall winner is chosen. These usually involve huge, complex, beautiful costumes.
For a historical look at this annual event visit Terry Joseph’s article “Dimanche Gras”
SIGHTS:

Singing Sandra dressed in …

This post was originally published on February 3, 2007. It has been updated once since then.

I was talking to a Brazilian friend a few years ago and she was surprised at some of the differences between our Carnival and theirs. You see it was a few weeks ago when she decided to look and see what costume/band she should play with. She was shocked when all the Trinis were like, whoa you are way too late. You see, here Carnival bands launch their designs in the final quarter of the …

Image from the Trinidad Guardian
If you are getting the sense that Carnival is one big long party you are right! So it only makes sense that one big long party would be made of many many big long parties as well. These parties in Trinidad are called fetes and are attended by hundreds sometimes thousands. Fetes feature the biggest soca artists of the season and can go on until daybreak. As the Carnival season draws near the number of fetes grows exponentially, and are not restricted to weekends either. It …

Exodus Steelband performing in Trafalgar Square, England – photo by bram_souffreau

It seems that every time a North American program wants to denote the ‘tropics’ you will hear the sound of a steelpan. It doesn’t even to seem to matter if the ‘tropics’ are in the Caribbean on a cruise ship or in Hawaii! If you ask someone from those parts of the world what instrument they are hearing you may even hear them say ’steel drums’ … oh my my my.. It is time for some Steel pan 101. A …